


See You at the Worlds

by Aria_Faye



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: First Kiss, Implied Bullying, Locker Room, Long-Haired Victor Nikiforov, M/M, Pre-Canon, Song: ...Baby One More Time (Britney Spears), Teenagers, and possibly more - Freeform, the beginning of a great friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 11:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25848871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria_Faye/pseuds/Aria_Faye
Summary: If asked separately, Victor and Chris will give completely different accounts of the first time they met.
Relationships: Christophe Giacometti/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	See You at the Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> This was my piece for the Ice Speculation zine, which was about us all taking guesses at what might be in the Ice Adolescence movie. I love these two nerds. I fully believe that they were Something in the past, and their friendship isn't one with many boundaries. In my head, they have been nearly everything to one another at various points in their relationship. That is the hill I will die on, friends.

If asked separately, Victor and Chris will give completely different accounts of the first time they met. Victor will tell the story about a blue rose crown and a single flower tossed into the hands of a sweet, pure boy with a head full of blond curls and eyelashes that went on for days. Which was indeed the day that they met and is therefore an entirely honest response.

Chris, however, will talk about an afternoon a year later, a locker room, and Britney Spears.

It was _Baby One More Time_.

Chris had waited until all the other skaters were out of the locker room before slipping inside himself. It was his first Junior Europeans, and, though he wasn’t the youngest skater there, he was still shy. So he sat down on a bench as quietly as possible and started unlacing his sneakers. A shower hissed against the tiles around the corner, so Chris made sure to be carefully silent.

He was halfway out of his costume when he heard the person in the shower start humming.

It took Chris a minute to place the song, but once the voice got more confident that it was alone, it became very obvious.

Very obvious, and very loud.

“—my lone-li-ness. Is killing meee (and I-eye!) I must confess. I still be-li-eve!”

Chris froze.

He knew that voice.

That terrible, _terrible_ singing voice. It sounded different without its usual smog-thick accent, but singing tended to do that. If this could have even been called singing. It was honestly more shouting at that point.

“—give me a si-i-i-ign! Hit me baby, one more time!”

Chris wasn’t sure what possessed him to do it, but he found himself standing slowly, dressed finally in his red track suit. He picked his way sock-footed to the corner that separated the showers from the locker room proper. And then he stopped.

So did the shower.

He saw Victor before Victor saw him. Victor, skin and hair shiny and wet. A bit of shampoo still sudsy behind his ear. Naked, except for a light pink towel around his narrow hips.

With every nerve in his body utterly on fire, Chris cleared his throat.

Victor turned, saw him, and _shrieked_.

And, because the sound of it shocked him, Chris did too.

So they stood there, in the men’s locker room after the Junior Europeans short program, staring at each other and screaming for a long but indeterminate amount of time. Until Victor finally ran out of air, and he gasped a breath. His shrill screeching echoed down the locker bays. Chris inexplicably wanted to cry.

“Oh, it’s you,” Victor said, one hand on his towel and the other pressed to his chest.

“You—you remember me?”

Victor held up a finger while he finished catching his breath. He pulled a wet elastic from his wrist with his teeth and used it to secure his hair in a messy coil on top of his head. The shampoo still clung to the shell of his ear. “Of course I remember you,” Victor said, still too off-balance to pull his public face on completely. “You have very pretty eyes.” He sat down on a bench and looked up at Chris. “Giacometti, right? Christophe? You’re in third after the short. Congrats.”

Chris just nodded dumbly.

Victor looked down at himself and sighed. “Look. Christophe. Can we…forget about this whole—” he gestured vaguely at the room around them, up and down his mostly-naked body. “Pretend it never happened?”

“Oh. Um.” Chris felt himself blushing. “Yeah, of course.”

Victor smiled. “Thanks.” He got up to get his track suit out of his bag.

Chris watched him pass, his heart abruptly fluttery at the warm-water flush on Victor’s skin—pink and raw, all up his back, over his chest, and dappled with bruises in various stages of healing. He fisted his hands in the sleeves of his jacket just to keep from reaching out to touch a particularly large spot on Victor’s lower back, all mottled purple around the edges and yellow-green in the center. It was somehow comforting to know that even Victor Nikiforov fell sometimes.

When Victor removed his towel, he turned his back toward Chris and telegraphed the movement heavily; it caught Chris by surprise anyway.

He closed his eyes immediately, but not immediately enough, because the image of Victor’s ass—flushed and perfect as the rest of him—ended up burned underneath his eyelids. Victor certainly wasn’t demure about his body.

God. Chris’ face might have been on fire.

“Your combination spin was really good today,” Victor commented idly.

Chris still didn’t dare open his eyes, but he managed a meek, “Thanks.” Then, after digging frantically through his brain for something related to Victor that wasn’t his ass, he added, “I wish I could land my triple toe loop as clean as you did.”

Over the quiet sounds of clothes rustling, Victor said, “I’ll help you sometime, if you want.”

“Really?” Chris hoped he didn’t sound too overeager, but in all fairness, he had just seen Victor Nikiforov’s naked ass. He figured he couldn’t quite be held accountable for his tone right then.

“Sure,” Victor replied. “Maybe before you fly out?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Great!” Chris heard the sound of the duffel bag’s zipper, so he took a chance and opened his eyes. Sure enough, Victor was dressed. And grinning at him. “You know, you’re funny,” he remarked. “I don’t know why you’re so shy. Coming in here after everyone’s gone. Closing your eyes while I get dressed. It’s not like you have anything to be ashamed of.”

Victor said it casually, with a casual smile, but the slow rake of his eyes up and down Chris’ body burned with the heat of the sun.

Chris swallowed.

The air thickened between them, heavy and tense. Victor looked at him like he was waiting on something—like he was at a chessboard, and he had already made his move.

So Chris blurted: “I like your nail polish.”

That seemed to be not remotely close to what Victor had been expecting. He blinked at Chris, taken aback, and then he looked down at his own hands like all of a sudden he couldn’t remember the polish on his fingertips. He appeared to be briefly lost for words, so Chris gestured weakly toward him and offered, “Yellow is my favorite color.”

Now it was Victor’s turn to flush, apparently, because his cheeks pinked in a funny, unattractive way. “Thanks,” he muttered, quickly curling his hands into fists, effectively hiding his yellow fingernails in his palms.

And then, because Chris couldn’t resist: “See? You’re shy sometimes too.”

Before Victor could reply, the door swung open, banging against the nearest lockers. One of the older skaters in Seniors skulked over to where Victor sat and began digging through a duffel bag nearly identical to the other Team Russia ones. He looked up and leered at Victor. “New boyfriend, little Vitya?” he taunted, nodding in Chris’ general direction. His accent lay heavily on the word Vitya, suffocating.

“Mind your own business, Ivan,” Victor threw back, colder than Chris had ever heard him, “or I’ll tell Yakov about—” Victor pantomimed smoking with his thumb and forefinger.

Ivan straightened. Glared at Victor. “Go ahead, princess. I dare you.” He flashed Victor a glimpse of what he’d pulled out of his bag—square foil wrappers glinting in the locker room halogens. Victor snarled back in Russian. Chris watched it all with the sort of hollow dismay that comes from watching a dog snap its teeth at a crocodile. Ivan was big for a skater. He could have broken Victor in half over his knee.

It felt like an eternity before Ivan left. The whole time, Chris could only think that he had never imagined that Victor could look so furious.

Once the door finally slammed closed behind Ivan’s back, Victor slumped against the lockers and ran a hand over his face. Chris watched him and said, “Is he always like that?”

“He and everyone else.” Victor glared daggers at the door. “Bastard,” he said, and Chris couldn’t have agreed more.

Quietly, Chris hazarded, “Is that why I wasn’t the only one waiting until it was empty in here?”

Victor sighed. “A couple of them held me down once and put bubblegum in my hair so I’d cut it. Took me a whole day to comb it out.”

Chris opened and closed his mouth. “I’m sorry. Did you tell your coach?” he finally managed.

“Couldn’t, or they’d do something worse.”

When Victor just shrugged, Chris got up and moved across the aisle to sit beside him. “I really am sorry,” he reiterated, and Victor smiled at him. Sad and small. Transparent.

“Ivan’s a bag of dicks,” he said. “He wouldn’t know style if it kicked him in the balls.”

Chris shrugged. “I think you’re really pretty,” he confided.

“Do you?” Victor said with a twist to his mouth.

“And sweet.”

“Sweet, huh?”

“Yes.”

Victor scoffed. Glared down at his hands. “Most people think I’m a little bitch that needs to be put in its place.”

“Well I don’t,” Chris said firmly. Victor smiled a little at that, but everything about him still seemed so _upset_. It hurt to look at.

Bravely, Chris scooted closer. When Victor didn’t seem opposed to the proximity, he gulped a huge breath, let it out slowly, and thumbed the shampoo off of Victor’s ear. Victor froze like he’d never been touched in his life.

“Sorry,” Chris murmured.

“S’alright,” Victor replied. He offered Chris a lopsided smile. Chris’ heart flipped over in his chest to see it. Victor was so, _so_ pretty.

The air around them felt subtly charged when Chris shyly cleared his throat and asked, “Did he really think I was your boyfriend?”

Victor shrugged. “Maybe.” His voice was small. Younger than his sixteen years.

“Oh,” Chris said. Breathless.

“Yeah,” Victor said. Not looking at Chris. That funny blush was back. “Oh.”

In a spontaneous fit of daring, Chris leaned over and kissed Victor’s cheek. Lightning fast, like a greeting, but Victor’s eyes flew open, and he stared at Chris with parted, _kissable_ lips and they were already so close—

The kiss was clumsy. Inelegant. A first for both of them, Chris was willing to bet. But it was honest, and it was warm, and it was good.

When they came apart, Victor still looked shocked—face overrun with pink, from collarbone to ears. He fussed with his hair for a moment, taking it down and ruffling it. Then, he said, “Was that because you saw me naked earlier?”

Chris blushed as badly as Victor. God. He _had_ to mention it.

He shook his head. “It was because you wear nail polish and take hours to brush gum out of your hair and sing Britney Spears in the shower. Your singing voice is awful, by the way.”

Victor laughed. “I know,” he admitted, and Chris laughed with him.

They sat there for a while, blushing and happy, warm in the dregs of shower steam. Chris bumped Victor’s shoulder with his, and Victor bumped him right back. Chris offered idly to teach Victor French sometime, and Victor accepted. Eventually, Chris could feel the time weighing on them both, so he stood and began to pack up his things. Victor slung his duffel over his shoulder and headed for the door.

He paused with one foot over the threshold. “Chris?”

“Yeah?”

There was that smile again. The real one. “Good luck tomorrow on your free. Давай.”

Chris smiled back. “You too. See you at the Worlds.”


End file.
